* Photo Ops--Iraq one day--Suburban Seattle soon after

In case any of you are wondering how the Chimpster is spending his time these days:

http://www.kirotv.com/news/9380369/detail.html

President Makes Fundraising Visit To Eastside
POSTED: 1:36 am PDT June 16, 2006
UPDATED: 9:59 am PDT June 16, 2006

<snip>

The president will appear at an event to raise money for freshman Rep. Dave Reichert and the state GOP.

No public events are scheduled, just a brief visit that was expected to be lucrative for the state party and Reichert, whose re-election bid has been targeted by Democrats.

<snip>

Peter Neupert, a Microsoft Corp. vice president, offered to host Bush at his suburban Medina mansion. Scores of donors are expected, with basic admission to the reception set at $1,000. Individual photographs with the president would be more expensive, at $10,000. The event was expected to yield at least $500,000.

<snip>

After less than three hours in Washington, Bush's schedule called for him to head to New Mexico for another political function.

<snip>

+++++++

Meanwhile, there has been a lot of criticism of the Prezidnut and his people sticking the community with the extra security costs required by his visit. And Cantwell's Rethug opposition isn't planning to attend the wingnut event, opting for his kid's graduation, instead.

the cost breakdown for these little trips.

I think the security costs should come from the amount raised (gross) by the fund raising event.

of *'s last visit to one of our suburbs:

Security for Bush's 2003 visit to cell phone billionaire Craig McCaw's Hunts Point home ran about $23,000 - considerably less than the $75,000 anticipated before the president's visit. The city of Hunts Point paid the cost of extra police security, but city officials were hoping to recoup some of the expenses from McCaw.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13315208/

That is their local security cost only. It is not the cost of Air Force One or the cost of security between the airport and the McCaw house. He may have taken a helicopter, I don't recall. Typically, though, we have to shut down one of our main bridges while the motorcade crosses L. Washington going and coming. The 520 bridge has outlandish amounts of traffic, as it is.

made good inroads to becoming the Representative from that district (which went for Kerry in 2004). She's the Netroots-backed, Camp Wellstone-grad candidate and it looks like she's making the R's a little nervous, since they have decided to fly junior in to raise money against her.

David Goldstein's HorsesAss site (http://www.horsesass.org) has been covering this campaign pretty well, and Burner's diary over at Kos has some good campaign posters showing the rubber-stamper with one of his more famous quotes:

http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2006/6/15/124850/193/26#c26

And now EVERYONE can see that * is all wet:



That little squall lasted just long enough to drench the idiot. 15 minutes before and 15 minutes later the sky was clear, blue, and sunny. It was a perfect "Welcome to Seattle, Mr. President. Now, go home!" moment.

HA!